Commuting and its effect on student life

Commuting, often from long distances, has become very much the norm for thousands of college students each year due to the rising cost of accommodation in Dublin city.

Megan McGee wakes up at 5:30am every morning to get ready, eat breakfast and get a bus at 6:30am from Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, to reach the Liberties, and the National College of Art and Design, for a 9am lecture Monday to Friday.

Her bus takes her from Monaghan to O’Connell Street, where she then gets a Dublin Bus to college in rush hour Dublin traffic, praying that she makes it on time.

“It’s stressful but it’s the only way,” McGee says. “Commuting costs me €50 a week between my bus ticket from home to Dublin from home and then across to college too.”

The reality is that many university students commute to college every day. They get up early in the morning to make it on time for their 9am lectures and get home late in the evening after the rush hour traffic to eat, sleep and do it all over again.

In 2022, the TU Dublin Smarter Travel survey found that more than one-quarter of that university’s students travelled more than 30km to college.

According to the 2016 census, more than 16 per cent of students need to travel over an hour to get to college in Dublin. Of course, this number has likely been rapidly increasing ever since.

This can negatively impact the college experience both in lectures and outside of them.

Commuting can be long and draining, which can affect students’ ability to focus when in lectures or tutorials, where they need to be retaining information.

Outside of the classroom, commuters report feeling isolated in terms of making friends or socialising in college. They are less likely to spend time in bars or join societies due to their daily trip to and from college taking up a generous portion of their day.

A huge thing that drives students to commute is the rising accommodation prices, particularly in Dublin. For most students, costs such as these are just not feasible without a full-time income to help pay for it, which is impossible to do while studying full time.

“It is not affordable at all. It was never a doubt for me that I would have to commute to college – everyone knows how expensive it is to live in Dublin,” McGee says.

Commuting is far from the college experience anyone imagined throughout secondary school when they wondered about life out in the big, bad world of adult life.

Lack of accommodation and high rent prices are leading factors in student dropouts or young people not going to college at all.

Transport within Dublin is relatively cheap for college students, especially for anyone with a Leap card, which helps to subside the cost of commuting.

“I never really hang around after lectures, I just want to get home as soon as possible because I know it could take up to two hours with evening traffic. So, when my classmates are going somewhere after I do kind of feel left out a bit.”

After waking up at 5am and spending up to six or seven hours in lectures, the last thing a commuter who faces a two-hour journey back home wants to do is hang around and wait for the “night out” to begin.

And then there is the college workload. People say, “isn’t commuting handy for getting work done?’’ or “can you not just get it all done on the bus home?”

Unfortunately, it is not always that simple. Buses and trains are packed in the evenings, especially around 5pm when office work finishes in the city centre, so it is not always possible to whip out your laptop and notes to start a 1500-word essay with a lack of space or ability to concentrate.

This then leads to a lack of sleep because students are trying to get the work done in the evenings for lectures before bedtime. While it is easy to say “can they not just leave it to the weekend”, with part-time jobs this is not always an option.

Commuting is the more affordable option when it comes to going to college, but it is not always the best option for your mental health or social life. Like everything in life, it has its pros and cons but it does seem to be the way forward for students in the near future – or at least until something can be done about the cost of accommodation.